KVM developers released the first update of the windows paravirtual network drivers a few days ago so I think a post is warranted in documenting the upgrade procedure. This is a short process compared to installation and will only take a few minutes to complete. For a detailed step by step procedure on installation see the related post on installation here.

Let’s begin by downloading the latest release of the windows paravirtual drivers that can be found at this location. Extract the files into a directory and make note of the location. Next open up your network device as shown below and select configure.

On selecting configure you’ll bring up another dialog window shown below. Select the driver tab. Note the driver version circled in red. You can use this information to verify that your upgrade has been done successfully at the end. To begin the driver upgrade click on “upgrade driver”.

On clicking the “upgrade driver” the hardware update driver wizard dialog will come up. You specify the location of the file so that you do not automatically search for any files.

When you are asked to specify the location of the file, browse to the directory where you extracted the files earlier. This example shows the upgrade file for windows xp but you browse to the version of your windows. For windows 2003, use the files in the windows xp directory. There are two files in each directory, a kvmnet.sys and kvmnet.inf. You will only be able to select the kvmnet.inf file. Select it as shown.

On clicking “open”, the upgrade process will begin:

Once completed you’ll see the following dialog confirming completion:

To verify your upgrade open up your network device as you did earlier and you’ll see that the driver version has been updated. You can see it circled in red below that the version has been upgraded to 1.2.0.0 as compared to 1.0.0.0 earlier.

You have now successfully upgraded your windows paravirtual network drivers.